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The leading provider of global news, comment and analysis for the telecommunications industryTue, 26 Sep 2017 16:34:30 +0000en-GBhourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1TIM and Huawei to create a 4.0 port in Bari – whatever that meanshttp://telecoms.com/484908/tim-and-huawei-to-create-a-4-0-port-in-bari-whatever-that-means/
http://telecoms.com/484908/tim-and-huawei-to-create-a-4-0-port-in-bari-whatever-that-means/#commentsWed, 20 Sep 2017 17:21:48 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484908Now before you get too excited, we’re not talking about the hilarious escapades of Gavin and Stacey. This one is all about Italy, so pasta, football, Vespas, opera and the ringing sound of ‘mamma mia’ everywhere.

TIM, Fastweb and Huawei will be teaming up for the development of new mobile networks in Bari and Matera, testing the 3.6 – 3.8 GHz spectrum frequencies in the two cities. As part of the project, the trio are hoping to have the first 5G use cases in action by June 2018, and to reach 75% 5G coverage by the end of the year, and full coverage of the two cities by the end of 2019.

Quite an accomplishment considering 5G standards will only be coming out in June 2018. Some speedy work from the Italians – they must be loaded up on pizza and espressos.

Now down to the exciting part…

Bari will be the focal point for what the trio claims will be one of the first 4.0 ports. Using IoT solutions coupled with digital automation, the aim here will be to improve security, access control and logistics across the port, as well as pave the way for cloud robotics and intelligent transportation systems.

Over in Matera, there is a bit more of a consumer trend in play. Using 3D technology, the trio will aim to create a number of virtual geo-museums, focusing on the archaeological sites and museums in the city. Imagine the glories of a holiday for those who don’t actually want to leave the grey shores of the UK, totes amaze right!?

]]>http://telecoms.com/484908/tim-and-huawei-to-create-a-4-0-port-in-bari-whatever-that-means/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/08/Sea-of-Data.jpgHuawei looks to the power of slicing and dicinghttp://telecoms.com/484813/huawei-looks-to-the-power-of-slicing-and-dicing/
http://telecoms.com/484813/huawei-looks-to-the-power-of-slicing-and-dicing/#commentsTue, 19 Sep 2017 11:39:19 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484813Speaking at the New-Generation Internet Infrastructure Forum in Beijing, Huawei has announced a new innovation project looking at 5G power slicing technologies.

Working alongside China Telecom Beijing Research Institute and China Electric Power Research Institute, Huawei will investigate how slicing technologies can benefit the power industry, such as automatic power distribution.

While the general benefits of 5G have been loudly and proudly proclaimed by all, over the next couple of years you can expect some much more vertical specific ideas. In this instance, the trio will try to prove a 5G network slice can achieve security and isolation at the same level as those provided by a private power grid, but at a much lower cost and leaving wiggle room for the smart grid.

“The three-party collaboration project is the first exploration of 5G slicing in power industry applications. 5G slicing is applied to vertical industries, such as the electric power industry, and this will incubate more new applications and business models.”

“Huawei Cloud Core Network started early to invest in R&D of 5G network architecture evolution and slicing technology and has many leading achievements. This project will enable end-to-end technical verification of 5G slicing in smart grid industry applications and accelerate development of sophisticated technologies and solutions.”

Elsewhere in the Huawei world, the team has released a new idea just to remind us it hasn’t forgotten about the SDN/NFV euphoria.

TestCraft is designed for SDN/NFV testing, providing a variety of automated test models and professional services to make sure you’ve nailed that virtualization idea. In short, Huawei is saying there are so many services and functions which the operators need to test, why not let them do it for you. It’s considerate of them if anything. Light Reading has more on this here.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484813/huawei-looks-to-the-power-of-slicing-and-dicing/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/09/Huawei-Power.jpgHuawei joins forces with Nvidia for server funhttp://telecoms.com/484542/huawei-joins-forces-with-nvidia-for-server-fun/
http://telecoms.com/484542/huawei-joins-forces-with-nvidia-for-server-fun/#commentsFri, 08 Sep 2017 11:04:46 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484542Huawei has started the Friday party early by unveiling the FusionServer G series heterogeneous computing platform. Break out the party hats.

Launched at Huawei Connect 2017, the FusionServer G5500 and G2500 products build out Atlas, Huawei’s intelligent cloud hardware platform, as well as its Boundless Computing strategy. We can basically hear you drooling through the computer screen.

“Today’s enterprise service applications are rapidly evolving, and the types of workloads are also diversifying. These pose tremendous challenges on the efficiency and flexibility of computing platforms. With the G Series heterogeneous computing platform, we can help our customers better meet these challenges,” said Qiu Long, President, IT Server Product Line, Huawei.

“Huawei is happy to join forces with Nvidia for comprehensive, deep collaboration in the AI computing front. We believe that both parties’ innovation power will translate into powerful GPU Accelerated Datacentre platforms to help our customers travel more smoothly and swiftly in the digital transformation journey.”

Huawei claim the G series is engineered with heterogeneous resource pooling capabilities, allowing resources to be intelligently orchestrated based on application workloads. Huawei believe this will enable users to derive higher computing efficiency.

Looking more specifically at the individual products, FusionServer G5500 is a heterogeneous server with a focus on data center deployment, while FusionServer G2500 is a smart video analytics server positioned for application scenarios such as safe city and smart transportation.

We couldn’t imagine a better start to the weekend.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484542/huawei-joins-forces-with-nvidia-for-server-fun/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/10/Party-over-here.jpgHuawei dangles $70 million co-marketing carrot at partnershttp://telecoms.com/484526/huawei-dangles-70-million-co-marketing-carrot-at-partners/
http://telecoms.com/484526/huawei-dangles-70-million-co-marketing-carrot-at-partners/#commentsThu, 07 Sep 2017 16:18:19 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484526There’s nothing like a juicy bit of co-marketing to keep partners sweet so Huawei has is apportioning a big chunk of its new partner programme to just that.

The announcement was made at Huawei’s big partner-fest – Huawei Connect 2017 – and is part of a $250 million partner programme aimed vendors, SIs and service providers of all kinds. As with all partner programmes the aim of this is to encourage the channel to incorporate Huawei stuff into its solutions and thus flog some of it.

Co-marketing involves the larger company contributing to the marketing of these partner solutions, often in the form of cold, hard cash. Perhaps the most famous such campaign was ‘Intel Inside’ featuring that little tune, which helped Intel maintain a dominant position in PC chips. The offer of financial help is presumably an attractive lure for some partners and the $70 million Huawei has set aside for this is not insubstantial.

“Companies are investing in digital transformation,” said Albert Liu, President of Partners and Alliances at Huawei. “Huawei and our partners are uniquely positioned to assist them to navigate this process. Huawei’s innovative products and solutions provide extensive opportunities for our partners. Now the Huawei Solution Partner Program provides a simpler path for partners to succeed and grow.”

The initiative announced at the event centralises partner programmes previously run by separate business groups. Huawei currently has over 1,000 partners, so the partner budget needs to be fairly substantial. There are also 16 Huawei OpenLabs where everyone can get together and have a great big partner party with Huawei presumably sticking a few quid behind the bar, and by 2020 there will be eight more.

As you can see in the table below this was a consequence of both Huawei’s strength and Apple’s weakness. Huawei sustained a rare foray above 10% global smartphone sales share in June and July, while Apple suffered an alarming dip.

“This is a significant milestone for Huawei, the largest Chinese smartphone brand with a growing global presence,” said Peter Richardson of Counterpoint. “It speaks volumes for this primarily network infrastructure vendor on how far it has grown in the consumer mobile handset space in the last three to four years. The global scale Huawei has been able to achieve can be attributed to its consistent investment in R&D and manufacturing, coupled with aggressive marketing and sales channel expansion.”

Apple always experiences significant spike in Q4, which features both new iPhones and the holiday shopping frenzy. So while it’s possible that Huawei could have maintained its lead in August that will almost certainly change after the iPhone 8 is launched on 12 September.

The longer-term trend, however, is for Huawei to be catching Apple. Our tracker table below shows Apple almost ten percentage points of global market share ahead of Huawei in 2014, but that gap had halved by the end of last year. In Q2 2017 Apple was less than a single percentage point ahead of Huawei, so it seems totally plausible that Huawei could overtake Apple permanently before long.

“Chinese brands are growing swiftly thanks not only to smartphone design, manufacturing capability and rich feature sets, but also by out-smarting and out-spending rivals in sales channels, go-to-market and marketing promotion strategies,” said Counterpoint’s Tarun Pathak. “Chinese vendors have become as equally important as Samsung or Apple to the global supply chain, application developers and distribution channels, as they continue to grow in scale more rapidly than the incumbent market share leaders.”

Another factor working against Apple is how good a smartphone you can now buy at a much lower price point. Apple has struggled to introduce anything revolutionary in its phones for year and when you can get a device that does nearly everything an iPhone can for a fraction of the price, many consumers are finding it increasingly hard to justify the Apple premium.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484480/huawei-fleetingly-grabs-smartphone-second-spot-from-apple/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/03/second-hand-smartphone.jpgHuawei talks up cloud efforts at Shanghai announcement festhttp://telecoms.com/484451/huawei-talks-up-cloud-efforts-at-shanghai-announcement-fest/
http://telecoms.com/484451/huawei-talks-up-cloud-efforts-at-shanghai-announcement-fest/#commentsTue, 05 Sep 2017 15:10:59 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484451There’s nothing Huawei likes more than a great, big corporate event and at Huawei Connect 2017 in Shanghai it made a bunch of cloud-related announcements.

The stated theme of the event is ‘grow with the cloud’ and seems to be a prolonged exercise in bigging-up Huawei’s cloud strategy. The opening keynote exploring this theme was delivered by Rotating CEO Guo Ping, in which he sought to assure the assembled partners and customers what a great job Huawei is doing in the whole cloudy area.

“The cloud is a cornerstone of the intelligent world,” said Ping. “Society is experiencing a tangible Matthew effect in digital technology development. Because of this, as well as economies of scale in investment, clouds around the world will begin to converge – becoming more and more centralized. In the future, we predict there will be five major clouds in the world. Huawei will work with our partners to build one of those five clouds, and we’ve got the technology and know-how to do it.”

What the hell is a Matthew effect, we hear you ask. Well Telecoms.com copies-and-pastes into Google so you don’t have to, dear reader. According to Wikipedia it’s the phenomenon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, but we assume he’s referring more to some kind of snowball effect in the growth of the digital economy, or something. Light Reading was at the event and was able to shed a bit more light (see what I did there?) on what Ping was trying to say.

There followed lots of talk of partnership and general cloud camaraderie. Huawei has signed an agreement with Microsoft to distribute its apps via the Huawei cloud and there was time given its ‘Platform + Connection + Ecosystem’ enterprise IoT strategy and to the continued efforts of the telco industry to digitally transform itself.

“To succeed in B2B, carriers must first transform their business model from helping enterprise customers own assets to offering them services, and from one-off resale to delivering continuous services.” said Yue Kun, Marketing VP for Huawei’s Carrier BG. “Cloud will be the platform and portal for carrier B2B services. Via the cloud, carriers will be able to develop entirely new blue ocean markets in industry, government, and enterprises with services like IoT, video, communications, computing, and storage.”

Huawei has been banging on about the cloud all year. It has clearly decided that one of the best ways to help its operator customers with their digital transformation journey is to help them get up to speed on cloudy stuff. At the same time bolstering its own ICT credentials will help the company to hedge its bets and be in a strong position to exploit emerging tech megatrends such as IoT.

The announcement fest continued into day two of the event, with another raft of initiatives, strategies and partnerships, but we figured you’ve got the general gist by now.

Most tradeshow presentations of this nature do not offer any revolutionary insight into the company or the future. They are traditionally full of clichés, PR soundbites and bold statements used to appease investors. But on the weekend, Huawei announced the launch of the Kirin 970 SoC, what it claims contains the first-ever Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for smartphones.

“As we look to the future of smartphones, we’re at the threshold of an exciting new era,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group.

“Mobile AI = On-Device AI + Cloud AI. Huawei is committed to turning smart devices into intelligent devices by building end-to-end capabilities that support coordinated development of chips, devices, and the cloud.

“The ultimate goal is to provide a significantly better user experience. The Kirin 970 is the first in a series of new advances that will bring powerful AI features to our devices and take them beyond the competition.”

It’s not a complicated idea. To improve the performance of artificial intelligence applications on smartphones, move some of the intelligence onto the smartphones themselves. The cloud is an excellent platform for many AI experiences, but there is the risk of latency, stability, and privacy; keeping it local addresses some of these concerns.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding, should this NPU technology perform as Huawei hopes it would certainly give a leg-up in terms of AI performance on devices. Considering the anticipated role AI in our daily lives moving forward, it is certainly a good sign for a smartphone manufacturing which has been chomping up market share, chasing down Samsung and Apple at the top of the global leader board.

Another factor to consider is whether people are actually bothered. For the tech geeks out there, this will be a wonderful bit of news, but will the general public actually care? How many people actually use their virtual assistant right? We’re not too sure of the official numbers, but we would bet it is a smallish percentage.

Huawei has claimed the chip is 20-times faster than traditional processors on the market, supporting real-time image recognition, voice interaction, and intelligent photography. We haven’t heard any hugely vocal complaints that such features were too laggy at the moment, so maybe Huawei has fixed a problem which isn’t actually there.

When looking at the more complex, intelligence driven applications, this speed might well be needed. But these are not here yet. Mass market penetration is certainly nowhere near.

This is certainly a positive step forward, but the question remains as to whether there will be any relevance in the world of today. Huawei might have fixed tomorrow’s problem before the people of today have actually realized there is one. It’s very considerate of them, but we’re not too sure whether this will help them sell smartphones over the next couple of months.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484408/huawei-claims-ai-breakthrough-but-will-anyone-care/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/08/Artificial-Intelligence-2.jpgAmazon spends 193x more on R&D than Deutsche Telekomhttp://telecoms.com/484402/amazon-spends-193x-more-on-rd-than-deutsche-telekom/
http://telecoms.com/484402/amazon-spends-193x-more-on-rd-than-deutsche-telekom/#commentsMon, 04 Sep 2017 10:41:07 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484402Everyone is innovative if you believe what they say, but few companies could even dream of playing the same R&D game as the worlds’ tech big boys.

Although it would be considered a relatively simplistic method of judging future success of a business, the money being spent on research and development is a good indication. This is of course no guarantee of success, but it at least provides some guidance. Data from Factset has revealed the biggest R&D spenders in the US are the tech companies, and it should come as little surprise who is at the time of the list.

Amazon hits top-spot, with $16.1 billion spent on R&D last year, with Google hitting second at $13.9 billion, Intel in third at $12.7 billion, while Microsoft and Apple complete the top five with $12.3 billion and $10 billion respectively.

Amazon has proven once again to be a company which cares more about the long-term, bigger picture, than quarterly dividends and pressure from those who want an immediate pay-off. The gap at the top is quite considerable, especially considering Google, a company not known for being shy in the R&D space, is in a notably distant second.

Perhaps the question should be what Amazon is actually spending money on? It turned the retail space on its head with an aggressive investment strategy similar to this, so what vertical should be keeping an eye out? The virtual assistant and smart home space by the looks of it.

The battle with Google for control of the living room is a very public one, but recruitment evidence may also give an indication this is the top priority for Amazon. The Alexa business unit is hiring hundreds of software engineers, having been given preference over other business areas, while Tom Taylor has been appointed as the units chief. Taylor has quite a reputation in the business, known for scaling high-growth operations. The omens are pointing towards Alexa.

But how does this compare to the rest of the world, and also those in the telco space?

Looking at the giants of the technology world, the US is still leading the charge. YCharts estimates that the Chinese firms are spending big, but not it the same ballpark. Over the course of 2016, Baidu put $1.525 billion into R&D, while Alibaba hit $2.53 billion. In Korea, Samsung was more in-line with Silicon Valley, accounting for investments of $12.14 in 2016, while Japanese Sony decided to put $4.09 billion investment into the future.

On the telco side of things, money is being spent in the places you might expect. Huawei, the staggering leader in the infrastructure game, is able to compete with Silicon Valley’s best and brightest, with roughly $11.27 billion of R&D spend across 2016, while Ericsson and Nokia once again languished with $3.9 billion and $5.49 billion respectively.

Looking at the operators, they were surprisingly quiet. Not in terms of chest beating or declaring they are the best things ever. No, the arrogant operators were excellently equipped to tell us they are truly innovative, but when it comes to actual evidence there is little to shout about. We had a look on the Orange, AT&T, Vodafone and Verizon websites and were unable to find much information about concrete investment in R&D.

The only one we were able to find a specific number was Deutsche Telekom. Here, those crafty Germans managed to pump €84.1 million into R&D. We suspect the investment levels won’t be too different when you look at the other operators. We’re not saying operators should be spending billions, but this is a meagre amount, accounting for 1.13% of total revenues. Huawei in comparison puts 15% of total revenues into R&D, while Amazon stood at almost 12%.

And there is perhaps the reason why the telcos are viewed as completely un-innovative. They aren’t attracting the right people or spending on R&D. Is it any surprise the industry is being relegated to the highly regulated role of utility? The operators aren’t helping themselves at all, merely presenting themselves as custodians and misleading marketers, as opposed to a critical aspect of the technology ecosystem.

The telcos are important and will continue to be important, but not in the way they necessarily want to be. IoT is an area which could have turned fortunes, but the investment levels remained low. The telcos will capture the connectivity revenues, but this is only a small slice of the pie; what about the rest? What about the digital transformation fortunes which even seems eager to claim? Not likely. The Accenture’s or IBM’s or CapGemini’s of the world are doing well to secure these.

Once again, the dumb pipe phrase will raise its ugly head, and it can hardly be blamed. The operators are contributing to their own downfall.

Just like TMUS yesterday DT chose to throw a bone to its kit partner, in this case Huawei. The two claim to be using 3GPP specifications for 5G New Radio to achieve not just 2 Gbps of data throughput, but a mere three milliseconds of latency. This has all been done over the 3.7 GHz band.

This ‘pre-standard 5G’ is derived from the 3GPP efforts in the area of ‘non-standalone New Radio’, which is code for getting the enhanced mobile broadband bit done before the rest is ready. “With this real-world achievement, DT is making its first important step towards a 5G network launch,” said DT CTO Bruno Jacobfeuerborn. “When the standard is defined, we will trial it in 2018 to prepare the ground for a wider deployment of commercial sites and the offering of devices for the mass market as they become available.”

“As long time partners, both Deutsche Telekom Group and Huawei have joined hands to successfully test 5G NR equipment in field environments based on latest 3GPP R15 standards,” said Huimin Zhu, 5G VP at Huawei. “These achievements highlight the capabilities of the 5G NR equipment to meet operators’ requirements for addressing new business opportunities for end users. Huawei is confident that the partnership with Deutsche Telekom can fully prepare the commercial launch of 5G NR services in Europe by 2020 thanks to 3GPP standardization efforts.”

This was just one of a frenzy of announcements from DT at the show. Its EntertainTV video-on-demand is getting a boost with a bunch of premium content including a range of classic German movies. DT has also launched a rather forced-sounding digital lifestyle sub-brand called #JETZMAGENTA. Repeated reading of the announcement shed no light on what the point of it is, so instead here’s a photo of it at the show.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484386/dt-and-huawei-claim-europes-first-5g-connection/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/09/DT-5G.jpgChina Mobile and Huawei take another small step with Massive MIMOhttp://telecoms.com/484260/china-mobile-and-huawei-take-another-small-step-with-massive-mimo/
http://telecoms.com/484260/china-mobile-and-huawei-take-another-small-step-with-massive-mimo/#commentsTue, 29 Aug 2017 11:51:35 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484260China Mobile and Huawei have jointly announced the completion of the second phase of Massive MIMO research, a project with the objective of 1.09 Gbps cell throughput.

The field trials, focused on 4.5G Evolution in which spatial multiplexing of Massive MIMIO, used on commercial UEs, with the pair claiming they had achieved 1 Gbps cell throughput with 20 MHz TDD spectrum.

Huawei believes such a breakthrough will go a long way in aiding the development of 3D beamforming, accurate channel calibration, intelligent orthogonalization, advanced power distribution, and other technologies to improve efficiencies on the network.

The trial is another positive step forward in addressing congestion of mobile networks, which is becoming a much more prominent challenge considering trends in the video space. Massive MIMO has been touted as one of the most viable opportunities to reduce network strain in recent years, primarily due to the network efficiencies it offers.

Huawei has stated the commercial deployment of Massive MIMO currently reaches 720 Mbps cell throughput on a 20 MHz bandwidth. 720 Mbps is six to seven times the spectral efficiency what would be expected with a traditional base station, and should this trial prove to be transferrable to the real world, it would certainly be another positive step forward.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484260/china-mobile-and-huawei-take-another-small-step-with-massive-mimo/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/10/Huawei.jpgHuawei and Smart Axiata find themselves and 4.5G in Cambodiahttp://telecoms.com/484205/huawei-and-smart-axiata-find-themselves-and-4-5g-in-cambodia/
http://telecoms.com/484205/huawei-and-smart-axiata-find-themselves-and-4-5g-in-cambodia/#commentsWed, 23 Aug 2017 11:04:34 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484205Huawei and Smart Axiata have jointly announced the launch of a 4.5G mobile connectivity service in Cambodia.

Huawei claims the new service will enable subscribers to experience 10 times faster average mobile internet speeds than normal 4G, though whether this is a realistic ambition remains to be seen. ‘Enable’ could be seen in the same bracket as the ‘up to’ condition, representing a perfect scenario, though it shouldn’t take away from the fact that this is certainly a positive step forward in a developing market.

“I’m very pleased that together with Smart, we are able to build a better connected Cambodia through accelerating the mobile broadband development,” said Minister of Posts and Telecommunications of Cambodia, Dr Margaret Hu.

“With increasing demand for personalized and diversified services, emerging markets represent tremendous new opportunities for the telecom operators. Huawei is committed to supporting operators seize new opportunities by driving sustainable development in emerging markets.”

While the ability for those ‘finding themselves’ to experience the spectacular temples in the ruins of Angkor, while simultaneously Snapchatting friends back in the UK (YOLO), could be a focal point of the PR campaign, it offers some interesting possibilities for mobile operator Smart Axiata. Wireless home broadband (also known as WTTx), HD video and IoT services are three areas which have been highlighted, but it certainly opens the door for a more expansive digital economy.

But let’s not forget about those cat-yearning backpackers. After all, you can only look at temples for so long before chasing likes on Facebook and Instagram by posting a picture of a yoga pose in front of a site of historical beauty.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484205/huawei-and-smart-axiata-find-themselves-and-4-5g-in-cambodia/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/08/Selfie-Temple-Cambodia-Smartphone.jpgEricsson, Nokia and Huawei all get a piece of $650m Mobily network upgrade gighttp://telecoms.com/484067/ericsson-nokia-and-huawei-all-get-a-piece-of-650m-mobily-network-upgrade-gig/
http://telecoms.com/484067/ericsson-nokia-and-huawei-all-get-a-piece-of-650m-mobily-network-upgrade-gig/#commentsTue, 15 Aug 2017 12:25:26 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=484067Saudi Arabian operator Mobily has recruited a dream team of networking vendors to upgrade its mobile network over the next three years.

Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei are all getting a piece of the action, although it has not been disclosed how the three fierce competitors are going to coexist during the project. The total amount Mobily (otherwise known as Etihad Etisalat) expects to shell out for the project is SAR 2.4 billion (~$650 million), for which it doesn’t expect to need fresh debt.

“This agreement comes in line with 2030 Kingdom Vision and its objectives that focus on developing telecom & IT sector,” said Mobily CEO Ahmed Aboudoma, as reported by the Saudi Gazette. “Moreover, it will allow Mobily to provide the best services to its customers that comply with its new strategy ‘RISE’ in which its objectives revolve around boosting up the level of provided services by using the latest telecom technologies.

“Mobily’s current network has a competitive performance among the sector. The new agreement will contribute in raising network performance significantly to allow Mobily customers enjoy unprecedented services. The agreement discussions lasted more than 6 months to ensure adding plans comply with telecom technology rapid developments, in addition to adapting future technologies within an efficient contractual framework.”

This marks an interesting twist in the intense competition for Middle Eastern business between the big kit vendors. Ericsson recently won some digital transformation business from Zain Kuwait that Huawei is said to have been hoping for. Saudi Arabia is the biggest country and economy in the region and it is committed to reducing its economic reliance on oil though the 2030 Vision programme.

The launch itself seems to be focused around the idea of flexibility and agility on the network. Essentially, creating a proposition which allows for multiple use-cases and alterations dependent on customer demand, whether that would be 3G/4G/5G multi-service bearer or IoT, for instance.

“The 5G era is approaching, and the shape that service modes will take is not yet certain,” said Jeffrey Gao, President of Huawei Router & Carrier Ethernet Product Line

“The Huawei X-Haul solution fully supports 4G/5G bearing, so as to effectively support operators’ new service development and expand the business blueprint. In the future, Huawei will continue to promote joint innovation with operators in the 5G field around the world, and join hands with upstream and downstream industry partners to promote the sustainable development of the 5G industry.”

The new solution itself would appear to be focused on four marketing pillars:

Providing flexible access capabilities that can match the scenario of any site

Implementing agile network operations based on a cloud architecture

Enabling new service innovation through end-to-end network slicing

Supporting evolution from 4G bearer networks to 5G bearer networks

The team claims flexible networking is implemented through the IP, microwave and OTN access technologies, enabling unified fronthaul and backhaul bearing whether or not optical cables are used. For backhaul in highly-populated areas, Huawei has launched a 50GE/100GE adaptive network slicing router, where for scenarios where optical cables are not used, it also has a 5G-ready microwave solution.

It has also made a big deal of a cloud-based architecture for operations, which seems quite redundant to mention. Surely 99.9% of applications which are being launched for the world-of-today and tomorrow are cloud-based. Thought of the day for those marketers who are churning out creative collateral.

]]>http://telecoms.com/484003/huawei-goes-bear-hunting-at-the-5g-frontier/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/08/Bear-Countryside-Wild-West.jpgHuawei uses imagination for Irish ‘WTTx’ fixed wireless deploymenthttp://telecoms.com/483896/huawei-uses-imagination-for-irish-wttx-fixed-wireless-deployment/
http://telecoms.com/483896/huawei-uses-imagination-for-irish-wttx-fixed-wireless-deployment/#commentsTue, 08 Aug 2017 11:28:00 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=483896Ireland will be the first country to deploy ‘wireless-to-the-x (WTTx)’ technology thanks to a strategic partnership between Huawei and Imagine Communications.

WTTx seems to be Huawei’s term for what is more generally known as fixed wireless – i.e. using wireless technology to deliver broadband connectivity to buildings. The main reason for using wireless instead of copper or, ideally, fibre, is the expense and hassle of laying fibre all the way to the home. Now that wireless bandwidths are catching up with even fibre, fixed wireless has become an increasingly viable option for conventional broadband connectivity.

Imagine will use Huawei’s WTTx solution to deliver 200+ Mbps across Ireland apparently, amid lots of loft talk about rural connectivity, removing the digital divide, etc. This will be achieved through now-familiar LTE-A technologies such as massive MIMO and carrier aggregation. The model is to use wireless to cover the ‘last mile’ between the home and a fibre cabinet.

“Working with Imagine in commercial environment, we have optimised our WTTx solution deployed as a purely fixed network alternative to FTTx,” said Mao Dun, VP of Huawei Wireless Marketing. “Removing the barriers faced by FTTx deployments to meet the need and demand for Superfast Broadband, Ireland is an ideal market to demonstrate the ability of the latest WTTx solutions. We look forward to continuing our strategic partnership with imagine and delivering the best in industry solution.”

“The Imagine network will overcome the significant challenges that have impeded the delivery of future proofed high-speed broadband services across Ireland and meet the government objective of a truly connected society, positioning both rural and urban Ireland to fully capitalise on the digital economy,” said Sean Bolger, Founder and Executive Chairman of Imagine.

Ireland is considered a good proving ground for this technology by Huawei as it’s developed but relatively small and with an especially big discrepancy between urban and rural infrastructure. Imagine will be using 3.6 GHx wireless spectrum won in a recent auction as part of its WTTx roll out and is inevitably banging on about 5G already.

]]>http://telecoms.com/483896/huawei-uses-imagination-for-irish-wttx-fixed-wireless-deployment/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/08/5G-fixed-wireless.jpgSmartphone growth on the up but only good news for Chinese vendorshttp://telecoms.com/483813/smartphone-growth-on-the-up-but-only-good-news-for-chinese-vendors/
http://telecoms.com/483813/smartphone-growth-on-the-up-but-only-good-news-for-chinese-vendors/#commentsThu, 03 Aug 2017 09:50:05 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=483813New estimates have pinned global smartphone growth at 4% year-on-year for the second quarter, but it is the Chinese vendors who are seeing the benefits.

In total, more than 340 million smartphones were shipped across the quarter, with Samsung remaining top of the leaderboard, according to research from Canalys. Growth was relatively flat, but stood firm at 79 million units, while Apple managed to increase shipments by 2% to 41 million iPhones. While iPhone numbers are relatively modest, a launch over the next couple of months could see momentum grow into the profitable final quarter of the year.

“The smartphone market continued to grow in Q2, despite India and China both slipping into decline,” said Research Analyst Vincent Thielke. “Smartphone shipments to North America increased around 7% year on year, with Apple growing 10%. Apple outperformed Samsung despite the launch of the Galaxy S8, and growing anticipation for the next iPhone.”

These are relatively positive performances for the top two, but the success stories here are pouring out of China. Worldwide shipments of 38 million units, saw growth of 20% for Huawei, while Oppo and Xiaomi were the top performers in fourth and fifth spot, growing shipments 44% and 52% respectively.

Huawei is not far away from taking the number two spot from Apple, and while momentum is with the Chinese firm, don’t underestimate the power of the next iPhone. iCultists have proved themselves to be determined in sucking up the hype and euphoria surrounding a flagship launch. During the earnings call, Apple upped its revenue outlook for the next quarter, suggesting the flagship could be launched in September. These numbers are positive for Huawei, but the iSleepwalkers could make it a false-dawn.

]]>http://telecoms.com/483813/smartphone-growth-on-the-up-but-only-good-news-for-chinese-vendors/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/02/smartphone-device-confusion.jpgHuawei reports slowest growth for four yearshttp://telecoms.com/483703/huawei-reports-slowest-growth-for-four-years/
http://telecoms.com/483703/huawei-reports-slowest-growth-for-four-years/#commentsThu, 27 Jul 2017 10:51:49 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=483703Huawei has reported its numbers for the first six months of 2017, hording an impressive $42.03 billion, but at 15% year-on-year growth it is the slowest in four years.

Overall, most people shouldn’t let the decline in year-on-year growth dampen this party too much, it did after all bring in a ridiculous amount of cash. Nokia and ZTE will be reporting their numbers before too long, while Ericsson declined by a further 13%, but you can expect Huawei to continue to reign supreme for at least a bit longer.

As a private company, Huawei is not obliged to detail the specific performance of any division, and it has chosen not to do so. So no more to add there really.

And while it might be too early to make such predictions, might this decline in year-on-year growth indicate customers are losing their appetite for Huawei products?

Let’s just be clear here, year-on-year growth as a percentage was always going to decrease. There is only so much business you can collect and continue to post absurd numbers, however there is likely to be a saturation point which could prove as a catalyst for competitor growth.

A couple of months ago, we were out in Lisbon speaking to a couple of people from WeDo Technologies and the conversation predictably turned to Huawei. The Huawei success is down to a good business model, competitive pricing and, ultimately, Huawei being more innovative, but this can only go on for so long. Being reliant on one vendor and creating a vendor lock-in situation organically is a real risk here.

At some point, executives are going to have to give the command to look into other options, even if they are lesser. In a vendor-lock in situation, the power lies with the vendor. This is worst-case scenario for a customer; you have no control over the terms when you should.

Now, we do not pretend to have a crystal ball, and it might be premature to assume the recovery of competitors such as Nokia and Ericsson, however Huawei’s success could logically provide the stimulus that the other need to start playing catch-up. The next quarter will provide a lot more clarity to whether this is a realistic trend, as will the Nokia and ZTE quarterly results in the very near future.

]]>http://telecoms.com/483703/huawei-reports-slowest-growth-for-four-years/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2016/10/Huawei-2.jpgChinese smartphone market declines 3% in Q2http://telecoms.com/483675/chinese-smartphone-market-declines-3-in-q2/
http://telecoms.com/483675/chinese-smartphone-market-declines-3-in-q2/#commentsWed, 26 Jul 2017 10:26:02 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=483675New research from Canalys estimates the Chinese smartphone market has hit decline for the first time in six quarters, but its only bad news for the challenger brands.

It should come as no surprise the world’s largest smartphone market is an important one for most handset manufacturers, but those looking to crack it now are entering at a pretty bad time. These are the brands which will be facing the toughest conditions as Chinese consumers are becoming more drawn to the established brands. It would appear the age of experimentation with new gadgets is coming to a close.

“China’s smartphone market continues to consolidate. The top five brands accounted for almost three quarters of shipments, with the top four all growing and adding 10% to their cumulative share compared with the same quarter a year ago,” said Hattie He of Canalys.

“Adopting a diverse channel strategy is key to success in China, as competition has intensified in online and offline channels, resulting in many vendors losing market share quickly. Huawei and Xiaomi have strong online brands, and are now rapidly growing their offline channels.

“Oppo and Vivo face greater pressure on their mid-range from Redmi and Honor. The failure to establish online channels will slow the momentum of these rising stars.”

Overall, the firm estimates smartphone shipments fell 3% to 113 million in Q2 2017, with Huawei hitting top spot at 23 million units, taking the lead for the second consecutive quarter. Oppo grew at 37% to 21 million, while Vivo shipped 16 million to claim third spot.

While the international vendors will not be happy losing share in the Chinese market, perhaps a wary eye should also be cast to the future. There is a track record of Chinese firms going big in the domestic market, establishing a solid cash cow, before assaulting the rest of the world. Huawei (and to a lesser degree, ZTE) is a prime example, while there is some evidence of Alibaba heading a similar direction with its cloud business.

Truthfully it’s not so much a new phone as a limited-edition commemorative version of the Huawei 7 plus. The phone is bright red and has the familiar Colonel Sanders logo on the back together with the year 1987. This apparently refers to the year China first sampled the unique delights of the Colonel’s heavily seasoned, deep-fried poultry – an event so significant that its 30th anniversary should be marked by a special smartphone.

The product was announced on KFC’s Weibo account along with a video that you can see below. We put the posting through Google Translate and the result is worth reproducing here.

‘# Kentucky China 30 years from 1987 to 2017, 30 years accompanied by the taste of the times, suck refers to the aftertaste! Kentucky together with Huawei joint cooperation, the introduction of Huawei Chang enjoy 7 Kentucky commemorative version of gorgeous struck! Commemorative Edition laser back carving, pre-installed Kentucky Super APP, with WOW member 10 thousand K gold, but also the first to experience k-music song function. Limited to 5000 will soon be on sale, waiting for you to grab!’

As you might have been able to discern from the translation, apart from the branding these phones also come with the KFC app preinstalled. Among the countless benefits this app confers is the apparent ability to determine what music is being piped over the PA system of whichever KFC restaurant the user is in. Just when you thought the fast fried chicken experience had reached its apex KFC, with a bit of help from Huawei, has raised the bar once more.

]]>http://telecoms.com/483314/huawei-has-launched-a-kfc-branded-smartphone-seriously/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2017/07/Huawei-KFC-phone.jpgHuawei edges closer to the front of the MEC queuehttp://telecoms.com/483140/huawei-edges-closer-to-the-front-of-the-mec-queue/
http://telecoms.com/483140/huawei-edges-closer-to-the-front-of-the-mec-queue/#commentsTue, 04 Jul 2017 16:39:13 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=483140Huawei has announced a new industry collaboration which will see 13 organizations establish a virtual multi-access edge computing (MEC) ecosystem collaborative circle.

The term ‘collaborative circle’ sounds like something from a cult, or a scene from a dodgy porno, but essentially Huawei is creating a working group which looks to push forward in the MEC world. In all fairness, it has gathered some heavy weights to push the envelope.

“Currently, there is no such industry alliance to promote development of the MEC industry, which is a key challenge for us,” said Long Jiping, VP of Huawei’s Cloud Core Network Product Line. “All industry players should work together to drive the MEC industry forward and explore edge network capabilities to commercialize MEC and achieve business success.”

While it has seemingly lost some of it glamour over the last couple of years, MEC promises to be a pretty substantial technology in the network-straining world of 5G. The ability to host certain bits of content on the edge of the network works for both the CSPs, it reduces congestion on the network, and the consumer, connectivity will be improved. But people aren’t really talking about it that much.

“The next step for MEC networks should focus on building a unified network architecture through standards organizations,” said Yang Zhiqiang, Deputy GM of China Mobile Research Institute. “The architecture needs to enable unified scheduling and management, and flexible control and loading of edge nodes, thus creating an array of applications.”

MEC is going to be an important area of the connected era, and Huawei is not doing a bad job to get to the front of the queue here. Standards might be boring, but the importance of an opportunity to influence the development of said standards should not be underplayed.

]]>http://telecoms.com/483140/huawei-edges-closer-to-the-front-of-the-mec-queue/feed/0http://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/12/Mobile-video-content-apps-edge.jpgSFR gets in on the Huawei MIMO partyhttp://telecoms.com/482909/sfr-gets-in-on-the-huawei-mimo-party/
http://telecoms.com/482909/sfr-gets-in-on-the-huawei-mimo-party/#commentsMon, 26 Jun 2017 09:42:30 +0000http://telecoms.com/?p=482909Huawei and SFR have jointly announced they have completed France’s first pre-commercial field verification of 4X4 MIMO achieving a downlink throughput of 628.31 Mbps.

The 4X4 MIMO technology itself has been earmarked as the next step towards 4.5G and one of the building blocks of the 5G revolution. SFR has said it began construction of its LTE network in 2012, while its mobile data traffic has seen an average annual growth rate of as much as 100% over the past two years. In light of these trends, SFR has set out its ambitions to ensure 4.5G network coverage to 90% of its customers by the end of 2017, and further lift this figure to 99% by 2018.

“SFR’s goal is to build the best and fastest 4.5G network in France,” said Michel Paulin, CEO of SFR Group. “This will both improve our customers’ lives with the best available telecommunications service, and also pave the way for the future, since a successful transition to 5G will depend first on 4.5G successes.

“Today, SFR’s 4.5G network has achieved an average downlink throughput of 300 Mbps in over 221 cities. A 10-GB video can be downloaded within 4 minutes and 30 seconds. We will further increase the average downlink throughput to 500 Mbps by 2018. Moreover, SFR will actively promote the most sophisticated 4×4 MIMO smartphones to offer users the best LTE experience.”

Aside from capitalizing on the thirst for speed which is appearing in the consumer ranks, the team are also using 4×4 MIMO to capture the imagination of enterprise customers as well.

It’s a smart angle from SFR, and while it might seem obvious, few brands have played on the idea. With the introduction of 5G, new business models will begin to appear. With something new, especially in larger organizations, comes an element of nervousness. The ability to test out the new business model or approach to offering services on 4.5G is a clever twist to add to marketing campaigns. It’s stating the obvious, but playing on the insecurities of those organizations who can’t afford to get things wrong is a good move.

MIMO, whether it would be small, medium, large or massive, is fast becoming the technology which everyone wants to talk about. Huawei also announced a 4×4 MIMO deal win with Claro Brazil today to cover Brasilia. Like other buzzwords such as containers or Devops, the euphoria will die down before too long as it becomes an everyday aspect of life. But that shouldn’t take away from the incremental steps which are being tread.